CONCERT REVIEW: Swift wows local fans with spectacular arena show

SAN DIEGO ---- If you ever wondered why Taylor Swift has
Hoovered up virtually every major music industry award in the past
two years, your questions would've been answered Thursday night,
when the 21-year-old country pop star's epic "Speak Now World Tour"
played the sold-out Valley View Casino Center.

Spectacular seems too puny a word for the mega-millions show,
which features an enormous Victorian theater-style set, eight
dancers, three aerialists, a violin octet, a huge revolving tree,
showers of confetti, fireworks, a harpist, a five-member band, two
backup singers and three enormous high-definition screens showing
an endless stream of animated graphics and video close-ups.

And then there's the charismatic Swift herself, who sang
near-flawlessly for two-and-a-half hours, accompanied herself on
four different guitars, a banjo, a ukulele and a piano, and
somehow managed nine costume changes and three hairstyles.

Riding high on nearly 6 million in sales for her third album
"Speak Now," Swift has kicked up the glitz for this tour, which
turns virtually every one of the 19 songs she performed into a live
music video.

For the wedding-themed title song, there were pews, a bride,
groom and bridesmaids; for "Back to December," a blizzard of white
confetti rained over the audience as Swift played a grand piano
under a bare-limbed tree; for the folky "Our Song," a country
jamboree included a stuffed goat, moonshine jug and washboard; for
"Better than Revenge" (allegedly targeted at pop star Demi Lovato
for stealing Swift's boyfriend), a red dressed-Swift pantomimed an
epic girl fight with a Lovato lookalike; for "Haunted," three
spider-like bungee aerialists plunged to the stage from oversized
bells; and for concert closer "Love Story," a
Romeo-and-Juliet-style ballad, ballet dancers pirouetted while
Swift soared over the audience on a balcony-like platform.

Swift has said her goal was to create a fantasy world for her
tween and teen girl fans, who showed up by the thousands, many of
them dressed in Swift's signature short skirts, boots and bright
red lipstick. Most sang along and many held aloft flashing signs or
homemade T-shirts emblazoned with Swift's lucky number 13. Swift
had "13" painted on the back of her right hand and a lyric from
MGMT's "Kids" ("Memories fade, like looking through a fogged
mirror") penned down her left arm.

The piercing volume of her fans' rafter-rattling screams seemed
to catch the singer by surprise, providing a few spontaneous
moments in what was otherwise a heavily rehearsed show.

Swift, who's steadily maturing from a gangly teen into a
graceful Nicole Kidman clone, performed most of the tracks from
"Speak Now," with a sprinkling of past hits like "Fifteen." She
also paid homage to some North County musicians, borrowing a chorus
of Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours" for "Fearless" and doing a cover of
Switchfoot's "Dare You to Move."

Virtually all of Swift's songs are autobiographical, and "Speak
Now" is mostly filled with odes to ex-boyfriends and pointed
revenge songs against her enemies. That's to be expected of a
singer/songwriter who's barely out of her teens. But as this
talented lyricist and storyteller matures ---- and the scope of her
writing expands and deepens ---- she's poised to become the Dylan
of her generation.